Before

Back at the Cherokee, Rebekah used up the remainder of what was left in a first-aid kit she kept in the trunk. The bites on Stelzik’s arm were nasty, though not as deep or as severe as they might have been, and it was impossible to check for infection without the proper equipment. Whatever happened, the search for Stelzik’s dog would have to be truncated: Rebekah thought it unlikely that Roxie had rabies, despite her aggression, but in the forest there were skunks, bats and raccoons, all of which carried the virus, so she couldn’t write it off entirely. It was possible Stelzik was infected – and that made him a ticking time bomb.

He’d need a shot, and quickly.

All the way through the dressing of his arm, he kept offering to go and find Roxie, telling Rebekah it wasn’t her fault the dog had escaped, but she knew it would be quicker if she and Johnny went alone. Stelzik was still shaken, so after he’d opened his Chevy, turned the ignition on and fired up the heaters, they left him there to warm up and headed back along the same path.

‘He’d better give you a damn good interview,’ Rebekah said.

‘Do you think he’s got rabies?’

They entered the top of the dig site, the grass at the bottom of the excavation still tainted red from where Stelzik had bled. ‘I don’t think so,’ she responded.

‘So what was wrong with the dog?’

Rebekah looked around them. ‘Maybe she was scared.’

‘Of what?’

Once they’d got beyond the dig site and were back inside the forest, the light seemed almost subdued, the brightness of the day piercing the canopy in just a couple of places, lancing through it in thin arrows of light. It gave their surroundings an uncharted feel that Rebekah wasn’t certain she liked.

‘What was the dog scared of?’ Johnny asked again.

She glanced at her brother. He was looking at her differently now, his face shadowed by the trees, his expression one that she couldn’t quite interpret.

‘I don’t know, Johnny,’ she replied, and then a compulsion to call Noella hit her: she needed to know the girls were okay, as irrational as that seemed to be. ‘Have you got any reception?’

‘One bar.’

‘That’s more than I’ve got,’ she said, and looked past the treeline into the depths of the forest. As Johnny handed her his phone, she kept her eyes on the interior, searching for the dog, while she dialled Noe’s number.

‘This is Noella. Leave a message.’

Voicemail.

Rebekah felt herself sag. This whole trip has been an absolute shitfest.

‘Noe, I, uh …’ She stopped. ‘Give me a call when you get this, okay?’ Rebekah’s thumb hovered above the End Call button. Everything’s fine. You can hang up now. But she didn’t. She said, ‘I need you to call me on Johnny’s phone.’ She waited, as if some part of her were expecting Noella to answer. ‘I just want to …’ She cleared her throat. ‘I’ll speak to you later, then.’

She hung up, searching the trees again.

Johnny had gone ahead of her.

‘Let’s get this over with,’ she said to him.

But this time her brother didn’t respond.

He just led her deeper into the forest.